The company co-headed by Peter Bose and Jonas Allen is enjoying one of its strongest years both in TV drama and feature film.

The reboot of its crime series Those Who Kill and Jesper Ganslandt’s feature 438 Days are some of the hot new projects of the Scandi production powerhouse. 

On the TV drama front, the FremantleMedia co-owned company just announced its first collaboration with MTG Studios’ Scandi streaming service Viaplay and channel TV3 on the series Those Who Kill (Den som dræber).

“It’s basically a reboot of our 2011 series that had more than 1 million viewers per episode on TV2 Denmark, but with a new long-running format, an ongoing investigation focusing on one case instead of six, and a new cast,” told Bose to nordicfilmandtvnews.com. In the character-driven series, Kenneth M. Christensen (The Legacy) and Natalie Madueño (Follow the Money) play a detective and a psychologist, trying to figure out not ‘whodunnit’ but why, in their chase of a killer whose actions and mindset become more and more desperate. The eight-part series is directed by Carsten Myllerup (Black Widows), and written by Ina Bruhn (Dicte), Per Daumiller (Below the Surface) and Tine Krull Petersen (Dicte). It will premiere early 2019. FremantleMedia International handles world sales.

For Bose, Those Who Kills is typical of what Miso Film is about: strong and original stories, combined with high production values for a large audience. “We always want to innovate, not to repeat ourselves. Crime is still very much in demand, but you have to find new angles and work as well with different genres.”

Netflix’s first commissioned Danish original show The Rain selected for Series Mania’s official competition is another example of Miso Film’s strategy to push the high-end drama boundaries. “It’s a niche show for a specific younger audience, which would have been harder to finance with traditional broadcasters. Netflix has enabled us to explore new genres whilst giving us their full support and trust. I’m sure The Rain will find a large audience around the world. It’s a dystopian survival thriller and coming of age story with an amazing cast [Mikkel Boe Følsgaard, Alba August among others].

"Netflix has done really well recently with the German sci-fi Dark, which proves again the strong worldwide potential of local originals.” Netflix will launch The Rain on May 4, with dubbed versions in 17 languages.

Miso Film’s other event series selected for Series Mania’s competition is Christoffer Boe’s drama series Warrior starring Dar Salim, Danica Ćurčić and Lars Ranthe. “Personally, I feel it’s one of our best series ever,” says Bose. “Christoffer brought in a lot of his personal vision and style and we’ve focused on giving him more time [75 shooting days] to make the show as good as possible.”The 6x48’ thriller drama will premiere on TV2 in September. FremantleMedia International handles sales.

Also on Miso Film’s upcoming TV drama slate is the Norwegian supernatural crime thriller Seizure, written by Megan Gallagher (Borderliner). Details will be announced soon.

On the feature film side, the biopic The Way to Mandalay directed by Ole Bornedal has crossed 340,000 admissions, making it the biggest Danish film of 2018. This is Miso’s third successful collaboration with Bornedal after the TV series/feature film 1864 and dark comedy Small Time Killers, last year’s second best-selling Danish film. “We’ve had a great start of the year and look forward to our next release in the fall of Iqbal and the Indian Jewel, third instalment in the children’s film franchise,” says Bose. The first two films sold 200,000 and 150,000 tickets respectively. The film will be released by SF Studios, as part of a new output deal signed with the Bonnier-owned film group.

“We’ve switched from Nordisk Film to SF Studios late last year,” explains Bose. "We’ve worked with SF in the past so it almost feels like coming home, even if we’ve had an excellent relationship with Nordisk Film.” SF Studios will also distribute in Scandinavia and handle world sales on Miso’s next major feature 438 Days to be directed by Jesper Ganslandt (Jimmie). In the major roles are Gustav Skarsgård (Viking) and Matias Varela  (Easy Money) who play real life Swedish journalist Martin Schibbye and photographer Johan Persson who were captured in Ethiopia, accused on terrorism, and sentenced to 11 years in prison, before being released after 438 days in prison. The film is based on Schibbye and Persson’s book published in 2013, adapted for the screen by Peter Birro.

“This will be Jesper Ganslandt’s biggest scale project and I’m sure he will deliver an exceptional film; he’s very experienced with the actors,” notes Bose. The DKK 43 million (€5.7m) film is produced by Sandra Harms and Karl-Fredrik Ulfung of Miso Film Sweden, in co-production with SVT, Film I Väst, in cooperation with DO Productions and support from the Swedish Film Institute. Filming between South Africa and Sweden will start in May, with a delivery scheduled for 2019.